


Plan M (never yours)

by greenglowsgold



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Platonic Hand-Holding, character injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5799091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenglowsgold/pseuds/greenglowsgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="http://hook-on-fandoms.tumblr.com/post/137837183329/someone-needs-to-ban-me-from-thinking">hook-on-fandom's fic idea,</a> in which Harry finds Cisco too much of a wild card to keep around Earth-1, and too much of a potential resource not to put on Earth-2, so he convinces Zoom that the best way to motivate Barry is to force him to rely only on speed. Cisco gets the bad end of this plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. January 1st

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> January 1st, Day 1. Zoom arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this idea so much, I had to write a little oneshot to kick it off, at least. I'll write more (gonna try to finish FRoTT before I sink too deep here), but I can tell you right now it's going to be a series of connected drabbles rather than a proper chaptered story. Still, gonna get to some good stuff ;)

Cisco fidgeted aimlessly with the sucker in his hands, untwisting the wrapper from around the stick and then re-wrapping it again. It was butterscotch. He didn't really like butterscotch, but the bag was running low and he'd already eaten all the best flavors.

"This is pointless," Harry growled, slamming a hand onto the desk and moving to stand. Joe pushed him back down by the shoulders.

"This is serious. We need a plan."

It _was_ serious, for Joe to be involved. He didn't like Harry any more than Cisco liked butterscotch, but they needed all hands on deck.

"And you don't have any idea of when it's going to happen?" Barry asked, for the fifth time in as many minutes. Cisco shook his head, but didn't offer any other information. He'd already told them everything he'd seen.

The problem was, he still didn't understand the rules for this. He'd never had a vision that took place in the future before, hadn't known he even could. But it had to be, he'd known that from the moment his fingers had brushed Harry's wrist and he'd gotten that split-second glimpse of the man running down the hall at STAR, with Zoom a blur of speed just a hundred feet behind him. If Zoom decided to chase someone, he caught them. Cisco wasn't convinced they could stop that from happening, but they still had to try.

So there they were, planning out a strategy to outwit a supervillain, and Harry's ungrateful ass couldn't even be bothered to take it seriously. Cisco knew he was concerned, had seen the look on his face when he'd described the vision, but now Harry just looked like he wanted to leave.

"We _can't_ plan for Zoom, haven't you learned that by now?" Harry tapped his fingers restlessly against the desk. "Our best defense is Barry, and his speed."

"I'm _trying_ ," Barry muttered.

Caitlin came to his rescue. "You can't just depend on Barry. He won't be around you all the time, and Cisco didn't see him in the vision. We have to come up with something that anyone can use."

"The force field?" Barry suggested. He turned to Cisco. "Was he running toward the bunker?"

"I— Maybe?"

Jay raised a hand a few inches for attention. "Force field?"

"Cisco built it last year to repel speedsters," Caitlin said. "It soaks up their energy and uses it against them."

"Yeah, but it doesn't work." Cisco shoved the candy into his pocket, abandoning the idea that he was ever going to bother to eat it.

"Yes it does." Barry pushed himself away from the wall, gesturing with an energy Cisco didn't share. "Even the Reverse-Flash never actually went through it, he just worked around it. But if Zoom doesn't know it's coming..."

"Maybe," Cisco allowed. "But that only works if Harry camps out in the middle of the platform. We need something he can use anywhere."

"What about that gun? The slow darts?" Joe shrugged and shot Cisco a questioning look.

"It didn't work on him."

"It did _something_ ," Caitlin argued. "He got spooked and ran. We just need to make it stronger."

"We could take another look at the formula," Cisco said doubtfully. "It's more your area than mine, but maybe if we fiddled with the delivery system..."

"I can help you with that,” Jay offered, and Caitlin smiled at him. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Harry stood, muttering something like 'finally' and already looking for a clear path out of the room.

"Better do it soon," Cisco said.

"Not soon enough."

They froze, turning toward the doorway, but by the time they did, Zoom had moved, standing in the middle of the room. He was tauntingly close to Barry and Jay, like a reminder that he didn't need to worry about anything they might do. Barry tensed, hands and legs vibrating softly.

Cisco's mouth was dry. They were too late. Zoom was here, and Harry was going to run, but he wasn't going to make it. Cisco had already seen this.

Zoom's voice was a growl, so casual it almost didn't seem like a threat. "No weapon can stop me."

He moved, and Barry shot forward, but a second later he was flying back into the wall. And Zoom was... right in front of Cisco.

"Not anymore."

Cisco didn't have time to shrink back before a hand snapped around his arm and the world vanished into color and vacuum. It was like being sucked through a black hole, or what Cisco thought being sucked through a black hole would feel like.

When he stopped, it took him several seconds to figure out which way was up, and he wasn’t sure if he’d fallen over or if he’d always been on his knees. He struggled to get his bearings, but Zoom was gone, and he was just there, somewhere else, in a room that was entirely unfamiliar. Except... no. It _was_ familiar.

"Hello?"

He twisted sharply toward the voice. "Jesse?"


	2. January 25th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> January 25th, Day 25. Jesse and Cisco pass the time with party games.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple quick but important things:  
> 1\. As I anticipated, I don't care in the least about chronological order. This one takes place about three weeks after the start. I'm going to label the chapters with the dates they take place, to try to make things a little more clear, but keep in mind those dates may be juuuuust a little in flux if I change my mind later; I don't have everything planned out perfectly yet.  
> 2\. This chapter features PLATONIC hand-holding. This is a gen fic so far, and will probably remain so (unless a little hint of Barrisco sneaks in...), but there will definitely be no romance between Cisco and Jesse, though they'll be the main duo throughout.  
> 3\. This chapter also features moderate-to-major injury, depending on how you view it, and some violence and blood. Okay, assuming you're cool with that, read on!

“Never have I ever… gotten a B.”

Jesse gaped at him. “ _Never?_ ”

“Never,” Cisco confirmed, shaking his head. “What about you, little miss five majors?”

Jesse scowled, sticking out her tongue as she grudgingly lowered one of her four remaining fingers. “If _you’d_ done more than a double I bet you would’ve had a hard time getting straight-A’s too.”

“Oh, I never said I got straight-A’s.” Cisco smiled teasingly, continuing on over Jesse’s faintly betrayed expression. “I just didn't get B's. Or C's, either. Pretty much I either got an A in the class or I didn't try at all and failed. Maybe barely scraped by, if it was a required course." He shrugged. "There's a reason I only had two majors. I mean, besides the fact that I liked being able to eat and sleep. If it wasn't mechanical engineering or applied physics, I didn't care about it."

Several inches away and on the other side of a row of metal bars, Jesse shivered. "Ugh, I can't even imagine getting an F. That's just..." She trailed off, apparently unable to come up with language severe enough to describe the shame.

"Never bothered me. I guess child prodigies come in all shapes and sizes."

Jesse snorted. "Prodigy. Wow. Someone thinks well of himself."

"I'm sorry?" Cisco cupped a hand (the one that had already been reduced to a fist full of unraised fingers at Jesse's line of questioning) to his ear. "Of the two of us, who had active patents at 15?"

"Who was already enrolled at college by then?"

"Touché." Cisco raised his hand in a mock toast. He wished he had a glass of champagne or something to make it real. Or water, he'd settle for water. Zoom would have to come back with more soon, right? They'd run out last night, and he always made sure they had enough to get by, at least. But he'd never been gone quite this long before...

"My turn," Jesse said, and Cisco shook himself out of his thoughts to respond.

"Right. Just remember, it's cheating if your next one is 'never have I ever failed a class,' or anything like that."

"Ooh, yeah, we're such sticklers for the rules around here," she said, but she sat back to think of her next move, wincing a little as the readjustment of position made the bars dig into her back. "Okay, never have I ever eaten an entire pizza by myself."

Cisco gasped. "Hey, that's _targeted'i >. You know no guy who's gone through a teenage growth spurt can ever say no to that one._

"I play to win," Jesse said. "Your move."

"Never have I ever been to Europe."

Jesse hadn't either, which made for a very distracting conversation which started as sharing their plans for a dream vacation and ended with an interesting comparison of the political layout of their respective Earths.

"I'm sorry," Jesse said after the fifth time Cisco tried describing Italy to her. "I just can't imagine all those different countries coming together like that." Their free hands had migrated together, fingers entangled between the bars. It wasn't strange; they did that a lot, these days. Jesse had been incredibly touch-starved when Cisco arrived, and the only reason he hadn't followed suit was because she'd decided to trust him.

"Well, there's probably less variation on our Earth, since they've been a single country for so long," Cisco said. "But you guys, I mean... Germany _split_? Like, full-on, down-the-middle breakage? Jeez, that must have complicated the 1950's."

Jesse did her best to explain the European political climate of the late 20th century, while Cisco offered his own Earth's events for comparison, but neither of them had majored in history and there were wide gaps.

"Who's turn is it?" Jesse said eventually, when they hit a wall and neither of them could remember any more from 10th grade world history.

Cisco lifted a hand with the thumb pinned down and all four fingers raised high, wiggling them at Jesse tauntingly. "Yours, but there's no way you're catching up now."

Jesse smirked, easily taking the bait. "Oh, you just wait. I'm gonna stop pulling punches, here."

"Bring it, girl."

"Never have I" A burst of wind and lightning cut off whatever Jesse hadn't done, and she went still —and silent almost as fast as Zoom had arrived.

Cisco bit back a startled gasp and tried to sit up straight. There wasn't any water, not in Zoom's hands or set within reach of the cage. He'd meant to demand it, to remind Zoom that he'd always said he wanted them alive and this was not the way to do it, but Zoom always came in so suddenly and Cisco wasn't prepared.

"We... need water," he said weakly. The sight of that black suit and blue lightning had gotten no less imposing after weeks of seeing it on a regular basis.

Zoom said nothing, only stood still and stared at him.

"We need water," Cisco said again, more strongly this time. "Preferably more than last time. In fact, you could even leave us a whole carton, if you feel like it." And then maybe Zoom could leave them in relative peace for a while instead of having to check in every day like they were particularly fussy plants that needed watering.

Once more, Zoom didn't respond. It was enough to make unease creep up Cisco's spine. For all his mysterious energy, Zoom always responded. He seemed to enjoy talking, taunting them in that rough voice that couldn't possibly be natural. Today he just stood there, gazing down at Cisco like he was studying him.

And _that_ , Cisco didn't have to take. Well, he probably did, but he at least didn't have to take it sitting down on the dirty floor. He wasn't anywhere near as tall as Zoom, but what the hell. He set his jaw and pushed himself off the ground to stand.

"Look—”

He didn't finish the thought. As soon as his feet were solidly underneath him, Zoom's hand shot out. He grabbed Cisco's arm, pulling him forward to slam against the bars.

Cisco yelped, more out of surprise than actual pain, and he heard Jesse making panicked noises beside him. ' _This is new,_ ' Cisco thought, breath caught as he stared into Zoom's pitch-black eyes, inches from his own. ' _This is new, and I don't know what's going to happen._ '

The fear and the dull blow to his chest dragged him inevitably down into a field of blue. Zoom's form materialized first, but a moment later there was Barry, crumpled on the ground, and Cisco was running to him before he could remind himself this wasn't real. He barely had time to think, ' _Oh God, no,_ ' before the vision ended and the real world faded back into view.

Zoom was gone.

Cisco let out a long breath of relief when a moment passed, then two, and Zoom didn't return. His next exhale was a shaky laugh. Barry was fine. He was _fine_ , because if he hadn't been, Zoom would have told them. He would have thrown it in their faces, that their hero was dead and no rescue was coming. Whatever that vision meant, he didn't have to worry about it. Not yet.

Beside him, Jesse was still making soft sounds of despair. "Oh, God. Oh, God." He turned to reassure her, already stretching out his right hand for hers, but he paused when he saw how pale she was. She was shaking, and she wasn't looking him in the eye. She was looking down at his middle; no, at the hand he held out. Cisco followed her gaze.

His hand was dripping blood into a splatter on the floor, flowing out from the gap where his index finger should have been. In an instant of irrational panic, his eyes shot to the floor, as if he only needed to find the finger and it could be reattached. It wasn't there.

His legs felt suddenly weak and collapsed beneath him, sending him to the floor. Anxiously, he checked them, but everything was there that should have been. Only his finger was missing. Only the finger.

Cisco raised his hand in front of his face, watching as the blood began to track down his arm. It was a clean cut, right at the knuckle. It must have been so quick Cisco hadn't even felt it, but he could now, rhythmic pulses that he knew would only get worse.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded, because he thought he was, aside from the obvious. This kind of blood loss wasn't likely to be dangerous, as long as he took care of it. He should put some pressure on it, a clean bandage. That was what Caitlin would do, he thought absently. He really should.

He didn't. Cisco watched the blood trickle down and thought: if it wouldn't kill him, then why would Zoom bother? He would have stuck around, would have done a messier job if he'd cared about the pain. And he didn't need to do something like this to scare them; they were already terrified.

Zoom had taken the finger with him, leaving Cisco behind like an afterthought. He must have wanted it.

"I don't get it," Cisco whispered, and then curled forward around the empty space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got my headcanon about Cisco's grades from his comment that he got a 'straight-up F' in gym, which, idk about you guys, but in my school you had to almost WORK to get an F in gym. Or rather, not work. At all. Like, actively refuse to try. That's right, Cisco Ramon was actually a Terrible Student (unless he loved your class).
> 
> I'm sure that's the part of this chapter you were anxious to hear more about.


	3. January 2nd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> January 2nd, Day 2. Questions and secrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hell yeah, that's right, ANOTHER NEW CHAPTER. Only downside is this one backtracks almost to the beginning again, so you still have to wait to find out what happens to Cisco after last time. Sorry, I swear I'll get on that soon. (note that this one disregards that little drabble I posted on tumblr a while back that started with the same line - I wrote that one when I couldn't write and I hate it, this one is way better)

Zoom didn’t come back for two days. It gave them plenty of time to talk.

At first, Jesse was terse. She watched him warily, as if she expected him to reveal himself as either a trick of Zoom’s or a really vivid hallucination. By the next morning, though, after Cisco had had to drink the too-warm water from the plastic bottles, sleep on the cramped floor, and ask haltingly for Jesse to turn around so he could piss into a bucket with some illusion of privacy, she seemed to accept that he was real.

“You know why I’m here,” she said suddenly, after entire minutes of silence, and it was only the slightest of inflections at the end that told Cisco it could be a question. Most of her speech patterns were just a little off, Cisco had noticed, probably a result of months spent with no one to talk to but a barely-present psychopath.

“What?” he said, because it took him a few seconds to process.

“Do you,” she amended, speaking a bit more slowly this time, closer to normal, “know why I’m here?”

Cisco took another moment, because even though the question was clear, wasn’t the answer just as obvious? “He took you so he could control your dad.”

Jesse made a frustrated sound. “Right, but.” She grasped briefly at the air, snatching her hand back before it could get too close to the bars between them. “But why? I’ve been here for... I don’t know, months?”

“It’s January 2nd,” Cisco offered. “Happy New Year.”

She took the news well, hiding the wince with a shake of her head. “Months, then,” she continued firmly. “Whatever he wants my dad to do, shouldn’t he have done it already?”

Cisco opened his mouth, then closed it again, frowning. She had a point. Since Harry had come through the portal to their world, he’d been entirely focused on finding a way to stop Zoom, not on figuring out why his daughter and himself had been targeted. Cisco had assumed it was because Harry had already decided that, whatever it was, he would refuse, but Harry seemed like a man who valued plenty of things in life over the purity of morals. He had to have at least _asked_.

“I don’t know,” Cisco said finally. “Your dad always said he didn’t know what Zoom wanted. He came across to our Earth before Zoom could find him, so Zoom’s never really talked to him.”

Losing hold of whatever had carried her through bad news before, Jesse’s face crumpled. “Oh.”

Cisco started to put up a hand to comfort her but pulled it back quickly. (He had to let her reach out first, he reminded himself.) It had to hurt to hear that your dad had run away like that, even if it was for the greater good. At least Zoom didn’t seem angry that Harry had left. In fact, he seemed content to let things play out as they would, without worrying about the slow pact. Unless...

A nasty thought occurred. “Has he been hurting you? Zoom,” he clarified, “not your dad.”

Jesse shook her head, thank goodness, though she looked no more cheerful for it. “Nothing besides…” She indicated the cage, everything around them with one hand. It was more than enough.

Cisco couldn’t imagine spending months alone in a locked room, especially having no clue why you were there or what would happen to you tomorrow. He sent up a quick prayer that he didn’t have to find out. Speaking of which.

“Do you know why I’m here?”

Jesse raised her blank gaze from the floor and snorted. “I don’t know anything.”

“Zoom never, I don’t know, mentioned me?” Cisco asked, grasping for any possible information. “Or if you maybe overheard him talking to someone else about… me?” He’d been about to say, ‘about a meta who has visions,’ but there was always the small chance that Zoom didn’t know about that yet, and the not-so-small chance that he had a way of monitoring what they said. If there was any possibility Zoom was ignorant of his powers, Cisco wanted to play that one close to the chest.

Jesse, who wouldn't know either unless he found a way to tell her silently or Zoom swooped in demanding visions of Earth One, shook her head. "Zoom's never brought anyone in here except you."

And apparently he wasn't the helpful sort of villain who monologue his entire evil plan to any available ear. Great. So Cisco would just have to sit here and wait until Zoom decided it was share time. He leaned his head back against the bars and sighed, debating whether Jesse would appreciate the offer to play rock-paper-scissors, best out of ten thousand. Probably not, he decided, and settled in to see if he could MacGyver his way out of this.

He'd gotten as far as a complete scan of his surroundings (and found exactly one small pile of metal filings and a crumpled tissue more than he had on his first pass the night before) when Jesse spoke again.

"But who is it, then."

Cisco ran the sentence through his mind, mentally added a question mark, and checked it against the words of their previous conversation. Nothing.

Seeing his confusion, Jesse flushed and explained. "Sorry. I was just." She gestured to her own head. "And forgot I had to say the first parts out loud."

Cisco gave her a weak smile. "Okay. What were the first parts?"

"I was just thinking, if I'm here because Zoom wants something from my dad, then maybe that's why he took you, too. To control someone else. So, who is it?"

"I'm not sure." Barry would have been the obvious answer, since Zoom had been pretty much laser-focused on him since the portals had opened, but it didn't make sense. If Zoom wanted to force Barry's hand, he would have taken Patty, or Iris; even Joe would have been a more direct threat. And after Barry, who else was there? Harry already had a daughter locked up in here, and he hardly seemed to give a shit about Cisco, anyway. Caitlin did, but he couldn't think of what Zoom might want from her, and again, Jay was the clearer target, and vice versa.

Look, Cisco knew his friends loved him, of course he did, but he wasn't exactly anyone's Most Important Person. In the second task of the Triwizard Tournament, he was Neville Longbottom, waiting above the surface of the lake and hoping his gillyweed worked the way it should. Important, but not chosen. And yet, here he was.

' _Maybe you were just the weakest target,_ ' his mind whispered cruelly at him. Cisco shoved the thought away. The one and only time they'd fought, Zoom had beaten Barry soundly and hardly broken a sweat; he obviously didn't care about easy pickings. He could have taken anyone he wanted, and he'd picked Cisco.

It wouldn't do him any good, Cisco decided, to worry about what Zoom might ask someone else to do. He couldn't change anything about that from here. No, better to assume for now that Zoom wanted something from _him_ , and go from there. So what was it: visions of tech? Those were basically the options, though he doubted there was much Zoom could do to get either one out of him. He hoped not.

"I can't think of anyone," he said, when he realized Jesse had been staring at him while he thought. "Maybe he just wants me?" Or maybe the rest of their friends would start showing up here, one by one, until Barry was completely alone. ' _I hope he finds a bigger space to put us, then,_ ' Cisco thought, even as his stomach lurched uncomfortably.

"So," he said, clapping his hands together loudly (Jesse jumped at the sound), "what do you do for fun around here?"

They spent the rest of the afternoon running through round after round of a game that Jesse called "What Would You Do?"

"What would you do with a single phone call?"

"What would you do if a dog wandered in?"

"What would you do if the room started flooding?"

And so on.

Their answers ranged from short and melancholy — "I'd call my dad" — to outright ridiculous — "I'd teach the dog to play dead and then bite out Zoom's throat when he leaned down to check on it" — and always with at least a touch of morbidity — "nothing, I guess."

The game passed time until the room began to visibly darken, but as evening came on, they were quieter. Cisco was feeling increasingly anxious at the lack of information, and Jesse didn’t seem to mind the long stretches of silence. By the time it was too dark to see, Cisco was starting to wonder exactly how long they were meant to last on a couple of granola bars and water bottles, and whether Barry might show up anytime soon.

The next morning, Zoom returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anything in the conversation above seemed disingenuous or weird, like I'm leaving stuff out, I am. Cisco and Jesse met each other like 18 hours ago, they're not 100% on the Trust Train just yet. So they're both not saying everything.


End file.
